Networks or systems and in particular communication networks are made up of many different devices that can be located in disparate places and that can perform different functions. As a system, these devices work together to provide the services of the network, such as a wireless communication network. Regardless of the number of devices within the system, it is not possible to expect that every device will operate flawlessly or continuously. Disruptions, errors and faults occur and are to be expected.
Accordingly, network producers and operators have designed, developed and operate various network and alarm management systems that work with the network to detect, identify, characterize and resolve network disruptions, errors, and faults and to monitor the performance and configuration of the network. Typically, alarm management systems use alarms to notify a network developer or operator that there is a problem or issue with the system. These alarms can identify the disruption, error or fault and present them to the operator, but they are primarily based on a fixed or static set of alarm severities, such as critical or warning. These alarm severities and notifications inform the operator of the system or the alarm management system to the potential magnitude of an alarm and the nature of the alarm. Once an alarm assessment has been characterized, the characterization stays associated with the alarm condition. The operator is then left to prioritize the alarms according to the original assessment.
There are numerous issues that are presented by currently available alarm management systems. As the alarm conditions are static, an operator who is trying to resolve alarm conditions in the network does not necessarily have current or accurate information. For example, an alarm condition can be initially assessed as a “warning” but over time the alarm condition can become more severe depending on the nature of the alarm condition and its impact on other network devices and the system. Regardless of what the current alarm condition may be, the operator is still operating the alarm management system as if the alarm condition and its original assessment as a “warning.” Additional alarm conditions that are related to the original warning alarm condition may be needed to notify the operator that severity of the original warning alarm has changed. While the original alarm condition is waiting to be resolved, the operator is working on other alarm conditions that may have been rated more critical when first assessed and that are not as critical at the time of resolution. Thus, the operator may be resolving an alarm condition that is not as critical as another alarm condition because no new data regarding the alarm conditions is available.
Presentations of alarm conditions can be arranged in any number of ways. A first-in-time arrangement can be used whereby the alarms are arranged according to the time that they arrived. The operator is then left to sort and prioritize the alarms according to severity without the assistance of the alarm management system. In addition, this configuration of sorting may not present a critical alarm because the previous alarm conditions may not permit continual display of the latest alarm conditions. The format of the display may also make it difficult for an operator to find critical alarms as the notification mechanism may be buried within other alarm data making it hard to find critical alarms conditions.
Once an alarm condition is detected and presented to an operator, current systems continue to display the alarm until it is resolved. In order for the alarm condition to be deleted from a list, an operator therefore is required to access the alarm system and resolve the alarm or force the system to say that the alarm is resolved even if it has not been. This increases the work requirements for the alarm management system operators. This also does not present an accurate account of the alarm conditions to the operator.
To the extent that current alarm management systems prioritize alarm conditions, these prioritizations are primarily done against other current alarm conditions. In other words, the severity level of a new alarm conditions is determined and then it is compared against other alarm conditions that are active. When another new alarm condition occurs, the relative ranking of the prior alarm conditions may change depending on the placement of the new alarm condition. The rating and ranking of alarm conditions are therefore without reference to additional sources other than alarm conditions and their ranking.
In addition to these issues with current systems, alarm conditions are first rated and those having the same rating, e.g. critical, non-critical, etc., may be categorized together. Once in a category of similarly rated alarm conditions, current systems do not subdivide the alarm conditions so that an operator knows which of a critical alarm may have the most impact to the monitored system if not resolved. Therefore, an operator is left to rely on subjective experience to know which alarm conditions need to be resolved. As discussed, there is limited amount of data presented about the alarm conditions for a operator to be able to make the most appropriate decisions on which is the most critical alarm.
In view of the foregoing, an alarm management system is needed that can dynamically rate an alarm condition against other alarm conditions where alarm conditions are continually being ranked against new and old alarm conditions and other network information. In addition, an alarm management system is needed that can rank new and old alarm conditions against one another to be presented to an operator for resolution. The alarm management system is also needed to be able to rate and rank alarm conditions against additional considerations.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.